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This chapter focuses on the sections that divided Article II, such as Section 1 that addresses the selection and perquisites of the president, and Section 4 that covers impeachment. It deals with the powers of the president, which are set forth in the first sentence of Article I of Section 1 called the “Vesting Clause” or the “Executive Power Clause.” It also mentions the second clause that enumerates two more prerogative powers, which are subjected to the advice and consent of the Senate. The chapter cites the additional presidential power found in Article I of Section 7 that underscores the legislative character of the presidential power. It discusses the Committee of Style and Arrangement that was led by Gouverneur Morris, which sculpted the organization of Article II. It covers Clause 1, Section 2 of Article II that vests the president with the Commander-in-Chief Power, the Opinions in Writing Power, and the Pardon Power.

This chapter considers how an eighteenth century Constitution has adapted to a twenty-first century state. In important places, the constitutional text is flexible, with room to change as conditions do. At the Constitutional Convention, the framers reacted to both prevailing political theory and their own practical experience by adopting a separation of powers along with checks to maintain an overall balance of power. They did not grant the President explicit emergency powers. Important sources of presidential power are political independence from Congress, eligibility for reelection, and the qualified veto. The Senate checks nominations and treaties. Controversial provisions in Article II have been the vesting clause, the commander in chief clause, and the faithful execution clause. Presidents have given these clauses their present meaning. The President’s roles as head of state and party leader were not considered by the framers, but have influenced presidential constitutional interpretation throughout our history.

This chapter examines the theory of the unitary executive and its deployment in the Trump presidency afgainst the specter of a Deep State. The theory asserts that the president possesses all the executive power, that the incumbent alone is the executive branch. The idea is that anything less than complete control over administration by that individual risks an obfuscation of responsibility, clouding the judgments on presidential performance that “the people” get to deliver retrospectively in the next election. This reading of the Constitution is often joined to a strikingly plebiscitary conception of American democracy. This chapter takes up two issues of special interest. The first is an alternative “republican reading” of the Constitution which anticipates inter-branch collaboration in the control of administrative power. The second is the relationship between the vesting clause of Article II, on which the unitary theory is based, and the selection procedure, which has changed radically since its original constitutional formulation. The chapter concludes by pointing to the distortions of constitutional meaning introduced by joining an expansive reading of the vesting clause to contemporary selection mechanisms.

This chapter examines depth in oversight. It brings into focus the new oversight regime instituted by Congress in the wake of the Nixon impeachment and considers its effect in instigating impeachment charges against President Trump. Whistleblowers and inspectors general safeguard congressional interests in administration and qualify hierarchical control by the president. Activated by Trump’s backchannel dealing with the government of Ukraine, a whistleblower and an inspector general brought the relationship between administrative depth and congressional power out into the open. During the House’s impeachment hearings, congressional provisions for oversight split the executive branch, pulling administrative subordinates into Congress’s orbit and pitting them against the president more explicitly than ever before. Congress depended on the administrators who were willing to come forward, and it provided them a forum for airing their own ideas about good government.